The Food Security Sector (FSS) reports that, in September, more than 1.4 million people did not receive their monthly food rations across Gaza due to continuous food shortages. The Humanitarian Situation Update issued on Monday by OCHA Occupied Palestinian Territory states that close to 100 per cent of Gaza’s population now live in poverty, compared with 64 per cent before the onset of escalated hostilities, according to the World Bank.
According to the update, between the afternoons of 26 and 30 September, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 81 Palestinians were killed and 267 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 30 September 2024, at least 41,615 Palestinians were killed and 96,359 were injured, according to MoH in Gaza.
The ongoing crisis in Gaza will set children’s education “back by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatized Palestinian youth,” according to a new study by the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies and UNRWA.
The report, the first to comprehensively quantify the toll of the crisis on learning, lays out three scenarios for Gaza’s younger generation, depending on when the crisis ends and how promptly the education system is restored. Assuming an immediate ceasefire and rapid efforts to rebuild the education system, the most optimistic projection is that students will have lost competencies equivalent to two or three years of schooling.
The fishing sector, which used to be a primary source of livelihoods in Gaza, has similarly not been spared by the impact of nearly 12 months of escalated hostilities.
According to a recent report by the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), since October 2023, 150 fishermen have died and 87 per cent of fishing boats have been damaged or destroyed, including 96 motorized boats and 900 unmotorized ones. Gaza’s port and other key fishing infrastructure have also been reportedly destroyed, with indirect losses estimated by PNGO at about $7 million per month. This, compounded by ongoing fishing restrictions, lack of equipment and fuel, is resulting in thousands of fishermen losing their livelihoods, stresses PNGO.
Meanwhile, due to insecurity, damaged roads, the breakdown of law and order and access limitations along the main humanitarian route between the Kerem Shalom Crossing, Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, as well as the suspension of humanitarian aid entries to northern Gaza via the Jordan Corridor since the security incident of 8 September, at least 100,000 metric tons of food commodities, equivalent to two months of food parcels for the whole population, await entry outside the Strip; these goods must urgently be brought in to prevent further interruptions in life-saving distribution.
